Ancient tombs and statues unearthed beneath Notre Dame Cathedral | Hacker News Reader

Ancient tombs and statues unearthed beneath Notre Dame Cathedral

theguardian.com

123 pointsapollinaire46 comments

> “A sarcophagus containing a human body is not an archaeological object. These are human remains, and while examining the sarcophagus and analysing the body and other objects inside, we must do so with respect.”

Not something I expected to read. A new attitude?

When it is under a european cathedral it is a tomb to be respected. When it is under a african pyramid it is an archaeological site to be dug up and collected. That is not a new attitude, rather a very old one.

There's also a 3500 year difference between the two. I'm sure people living in 5022 wouldn't care much for graves from our time.

Depends on whether the people living in 5022 have ties/connection to us or not.

"Clash over telescope at sacred Hawaiian site"

"It is the burial grounds of some of our most sacred and revered ancestors"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clash-over-telescope-at-sacred-...

Strange how hawaiians care about these ancient burial grounds and we don't? Perhaps because the US has no connection to these ancestors while the hawaiians do?

African. Not egyptian. And even in egypt they were being built until roughly 2000 years ago, not 3500.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_pyramids

I never said Egyptian...

Also the article you linked says between 4500 and 2000 years ago. So the '3500 years' was a pretty decent guess if you ask me.

>When it is under a european cathedral it is a tomb to be respected.

*was, *was

>When it is under a african pyramid it is an archaeological site to be dug up and collected.

*was, *was

>That is not a new attitude, rather a very old one.

They are explicitly saying it now because that attitude has been changing.

These bodies are from ~600 years ago. Versus pyramids that are 3500-5000 years old.

Well, as this is under an actively used Catholic cathedral, and Catholics typically like to do our services on top of our saints, I imagine the clergy and the diocese has something to say as to how the bodies are treated.

Interestingly, always: a Catholic church contains an altar, the literal definition of which requires that it either contain or support the relics of saints. In other words, there are either bones in the altar or something which touched the body of a saint. Neat how the tradition had continued for so long. I wonder about how they manage to reliably source the material as well as to ensure its provenance. Supply chain is an issue everywhere!

Yes, indeed, there's always some portion of a saint (or something having touched a saint) in the altar, stemming from the early days of the Roman church when, during Roman persecutions, the church would hold Mass/Divine Liturgy over the bodies of martyrs in the catacombs.

However, most churches don't have full bodies anymore, for obvious reasons. However, when the altar is stripped (for example on Good Friday). If you were invited into the sanctuary... you would be able to see a stone, on which there is inscribed several crosses. Under each cross is a relic, set into the stone. The priest consecrates bread / wine over the stone.

In terms of provenance... you can't sell a relic, but most monasteries, shrines, the Vatican, or other places that have burial records, will provide relics upon request, if available. Orders keep careful details of their martyrs and saints. So for example, a Dominican parish will often ask a Dominican priory with burials of a Dominican saint for a relic. We have indeed even entered the modern age where some monasteries / priories / convents even let priests request relics online!

The Catholic Church is still making saints nowadays, e.g. the second to latest ex-pope (the one who didn't retire to a sanctuary to be taken care of by a cadre of single women): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II#Canonisation

"We uncovered all these riches just 10-15cm under the floor slabs. It was completely unexpected."

They never did any scans? I remember being a kid and learning about how some old churches would entomb people directly under the floor (not catacombs).

It doesn't seem like the notre dame was the best curated cathedral based on my readings since the fire. The alarm system failed and was far from modern, actually very crude with the guard physically walking to where the fire was reported (which wasn't even where it was), vs it automatically calling the fire department and a specialized team directly and not some half asleep security guard on the night shift. The restoration team working on the roof at the time were all smoking cigarettes and investigators still haven't been able to rule out a mere cigarette causing the blaze. No sprinklers to speak of despite similar fires affecting similar buildings and causing similar billions in damage. No other preventative measures as far as i'm aware; other cathedrals have been covering their beams with fire retardant material. The state owns all the cathedrals but doesn't insure them, so restoration currently has been reliant on donors, and to me its still an open question if it will ever be completely restored as planned (since some donors have even backed out). The fact the building survived seems to be because firefighters guarded the towers and allowed the roof to burn itself out on top of the stone vault which contained it.

> Sprinklers, fire retardant material

A cathedral is - among other things - a memorial to its builders. Changing the building is removing that function. Also, sprinklers may destroy more than they protect.

> The state owns all the cathedrals but doesn't insure them, so restoration currently has been reliant on donors,

This may be just me, but I find a rebuild-by-donations societally and spiritually a lot more meaningful than just some insurer and/or state handing over money. See also: Dresdner Frauenkirche [1]. It shows that society itself cares about the building, its history and cultural importance and spirituality.

[1] https://www.frauenkirche-dresden.de/reconstruction

Notre Dame has been altered numerous times throughout history and it will be again in the future, either by design or necessity.

True. I still think spraying "the forest", a significant work of artisian carpentry, with flame-retardant foam would have been the way to go.

Rebuild by donations is asking for the project to delay for decades. Look at La Sagrada Familia for enough evidence of how long it takes to construct a culturally significant cathedral using donations and no state support or private investment.

Maybe cathedrals are meant to take decades? Time spent that takes longer than a lifetime makes the building non-disposable, and it makes its builders understand they are working on something bigger than themselves. Consider that some took centuries to finish (looking at you, Cologne).

I mean that might feel good, but practically speaking it means less work is done for more money the longer you wait and let opportunity costs rise.

The state handing over money also shows that society cares. They are the literal representatives of that society.

The state handing money means that some parts of the state ruling infrastructure consider the cathedral building to benefit a small part of society - the part that keeps the "representatives" in power. Especially in Europe, where church power has waned in the last decades, I don't think it's appropriate for a government that is supposed to also represent Muslims or Atheists or Buddhists to spend significant resources on the building of a cathedral.

That being said: as a non-christian German I gave a - to me significant - amount of money to the Notre Dame rebuild. I like the idea of helping build a piece of art that will survive me.

Also the state "insuring" something is often pointless; the state is larger than any insurer and can simply self-insure.

This is most commonly seen in major disasters where the insurance companies fail and the state steps in.

Yet here we see there really must be a need for insurance. If the building were insured, there wouldn't be a need for donations from around the globe to support its reconstruction. It would just be done out of policy. If the state was able to do this on their own and actually earmarked money in the budget to actually self insure this building, there wouldn't be a need for donations from around the globe. The state can't pay for it, which is why donations are required.

Fire protection =|= curration. As far as insurance goes, we are talking about a state, slef insurance can work pretty well in those cases.

The fire alarm system was acobbled together legacy system, no big surprise in a century old building. Thr number of cathedral fires, or similar fires in other hostorical buildings is negligible. In a sense Notre Dame served as a wake up call.

It seems the state has not self insured this building if donations are needed to see it rebuilt.

> some old churches would entomb people

I remember visiting the Westminster Abbey. It’s full of famous dead people. Marked floor tiles and all.

Chaucer, Darwin, Newton, Dickens, lots of kings and queens all right under your feet.

As well as Stephen Hawking:

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/ashes-of-stephe...

Can you actually "walk on their graves"?

In Westminster Abbey, all except for the grave of the unknown warrior.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Warrior

That was what irked many Canadians during the trucker tantrum. The nitwits intentionally walked and even pissed on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa.

At the ones in Italy I saw yes, you basically couldn't avoid it there were so many.

It may also be "less completely unexpected" or "unexpected for legal reasons". I, knowing nothing, would assume that beneath any old cathedral floor is found something. But admitting that may be a much longer process than "accidentally discovering" it when work begins.

I'm not sure why it would be unexpected. Almost any Catholic cathedral of any import (even the new ones) bury people immediately underneath the floors. It's part of the planning of any church. It would have been even more common and less regulated in the times Notre Dame has seen.

What type of scan could be used to detect things like this? Are these done regularly at historical sites?

Curious about this as well. There may be something, but I can't think of any technology that can penetrate stone, other than X-ray, and you need a detector on the other side to see the image...

GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) would work to detect cavities at least. Some high resolution seismic work also be an option, albeit harder to run.

So not sure it would have worked in that case. The statues where basically used to fill the space (mixed up with other things) when the wall (Jubé) they were on was removed on the 17th century (iirc).

There were some large (known) cavities around, which is the floor based heating system from the 19th century. The discoveries have been made below/around the heating system.

(The other known pieces of the Jubé, now at the Louvre, had afaik been discovered when the heating system was installed in the 19th century, so not a surprise we found more of them when searching the same area)

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? I like those surprises so, theybare fun to read and show just how much stuff is still out there to be discovered in front of our noses.

This was the default method of burial in portugal up until the mid 1800s. There was actually a minor civil war as a result of the authorities stopping the practice.

counter point, wouldn't you have assumed that scans/surveys had been done? This is a famous church after all!

Forgive my ignorance - genuinely curious if there might be a different way of thinking about this.

10-15cm underneath the floor seems so shallow that one would assume it would be picked up with such a scan. With that context, why shouldn't we assume a scan hadn't been performed?

I think the idea was that the people who would consider scanning recently might assume that someone scanned previously, based on the popularity of the site, and decide against it based on that.

Though I'd think you'd be able to verify an assumption like that.

It's pretty tough to verify such things. We don't make reliable records of the absence of something, and while someone at the church would probably know where the records of such a thing occurring were - it would take time to find that person. Not to mention its no ones job to verify assumptions on what things have/have not been done.

Which is a good reminder that many things we don't know about are because no one has ever bothered to try, or failing that, they haven't tried hard enough.

Ah, of course - makes sense. Totally obvious in hindsight. Thank you!

> Archaeological dig also finds body-shaped lead sarcophagus buried at the heart of the fire-ravaged monument

Does anyone have a pic of the lead sarcophagus?

Maybe I’ve been playing Elden Ring too much, but this is how you unleash a boss.

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